Cyanogen, makers of popular software based on Android that extends the abilities of smartphones, is making a bid for the mainstream. The four-year-old company, which began as a one-person side project, said today that it has raised $7 million from Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures. The goal is to vault past Blackberry and Windows Phone to become the third-most popular mobile operating system, after traditional Android and iOS. And the company is already closer than you might think.

The announcement blog post has more details and background. This is either the best idea they've ever had, or the beginning of the end. I honestly have no idea which of the two it will be. I like the fact that they might be more popular than Windows Phone though - puts everything into perspective, doesn't it?

ahh so the cyanogenmod folks are convicted of violating anti trust laws and pissing off untold amounts of people by forcing their vision down peoples' throats? sure thom may be a bit smug at times but if MS had their way no other os would exist except one controlled or patembt trolled by them.

My congratulations to the cyanogenmod team for getting as far as they have, although I would like to know their business model. So are going to set up a marketplace to rival google's???

Cyanogen mod has brought an upgrade path where carriers threw the towels. I say they embody the true nature of Android much more than *ANY* carrier out there, nexus devices excluded. Continue the good work, we support you.

The thing is that people like Nelson and I, we work with Microsoft Stuff on a daily basis. It is our bread and butter.

There are a lot of shitty things I don't like that Microsoft does. But I rarely had things which are total time wasters with regards to ASP.NET stack.

So you guys constantly bash Microsoft for things that I find trivial. Some things are shitty, but they are bashed for everything.

e.g. Microsoft responds to user back-lash by doing a 180 on policy ... people on here and on the internet in general were actually having a go about Microsoft for listening to the response they got after they presented their ideas and actually spending a lot of time, money and resources actually implementing the changes that people wanted.

I also get called a Microsoft Zealot when I actively support projects like OpenBSD by actually supporting their releases by buying their CDs even though I could wait a few weeks or follow current on my server which runs it.

Also a lot of it stops any sensible discussion and tbh it shows a lack of maturity when discussing a technical subject.

So you guys constantly bash Microsoft for things that I find trivial. Some things are shitty, but they are bashed for everything.

e.g. Microsoft responds to user back-lash by doing a 180 on policy ... people on here and on the internet in general were actually having a go about Microsoft for listening to the response they got after they presented their ideas and actually spending a lot of time, money and resources actually implementing the changes that people wanted.

Some people are truly obsessed with hating anything to do with Microsoft -- like an extremely bitter ex-girlfriend, they just can't let go and can't resist their internal urge to talk constant shit. It's unhealthy to be plagued with so much solicited hate. Why some people choose to torment themselves in that manner is beyond me.

Also, unlike others, this is pure profits, there is negligible overhead involved.

In fact, Android is probably going to be a lucrative business for Microsoft in the future. They do almost nothing to extract obscene profits from its continued growth. At some point you've got to wonder if this financial interest will be a greater tidal force inside MS than the strategic value of Windows Phone.

Sure id be happy to go into some of it. First we can go back to 2010, the stock is tanking, Symbian market share is falling, and probably worse, Nokia as a brand is eroding.

The Board took a hard look (including Android) and decided to take an olive branch from Microsoft. It included a ready made OS and ecosystem, billions of dollars in financial support, engineering collaboration, etc

This isn't a deal they could extract from anyone else, especially when they were starting to be outpaced by the market, facing pressure from the impending Android apocalypse, and their white horse MeeGo was a stagnant joint venture with Intel (we all know what a good partner they are).

So Nokia made a choice, and 10 months later they had a phone on the market, then six months later they had another one, then the pace increased until today there's a device roll out every two or three months.

They also got their mapping IP front and center in this OS and also relaunched some of their forgotten services (Music for example).

Lumia sales increased QoQ every quarter except one single since their launch two years ago. Lumia name recognition is growing, the ecosystem is growing, market share is growing (EUR5, UK, France, Italy, Mexico, India, NZ, Latin America) and they are approaching break even (12.5 million according to MS with double digit sequential growth over the past few quarters).

What was the problem then, why sell? MSFT likely gave them a more certain future. Does Nokia roll the dice and hope they have the cash to keep up the momentum, or do they take the parachute from MS and reevaluate the fundamental direction of the company?

They chose the latter and unloaded an unprofitable division to MSFT for 7 billion, increasing their cash to 10 billion, which is some nice breathing room. As well as some nice immediate long term loans from MS.

Now Nokia is free to chart a new path, go into telecommunications via NSN by acquiring smaller players or they can focus on optics, or monetize their enormously valuable patent portfolio, or all of the above.

Nokia offloaded risk and kept the reward (Platform support payments to MS without having to reciprocate licensing fees for WP devices, and they own 100% of a profitable venture with NSN)

Their stock went from 4 to almost 7 dollars and they're even talking about a dividend payment.

Elop and the board saved the company and secured 32,000 jobs to MSFT, ensuring the Lumia line up lives on.

I love how you and the ones who think like you seem to pretend all was rosy with Symbian and completely disregard the collapsing stock price and market share. Symbian market share was in freefall a full year before Windows Phone was in the picture -- so was the stock price. Shareholder value was going down the drain.

Elop inherited a terrible situation, a deteriorating cash position and a company who's sales were contracting (but fixed expenses were not).

Re: Android

It would have taken longer to bring one to market, especially without the investment and engineering resources from Google. They also bet on the wrong horse, with TI deciding to up and abandon mobile chips which threw off their MeeGo efforts.

There's quite popular China Tablet brands out there. For example Ainol. If Cyanogen people want, they can exchange mail with Ainol, promise to slap and maintain the update of their CyanogenMod on one of Ainol gadget--and their iteration of course, like 1S 2 2S--and charge $5~$10 for that. I think that will be win-win solution for both of them. Right?

Business models have a nasty habit of being "unpleasant" to end users. Either users have to renounce to some of their precious money, or to some of their precious privacy, or to some of their precious screen estate (read: "ads"). I'm really curious what CMs business model will be. This will be the deciding factor.
I don't think that google might have something against it, virtually all android OEMs are trying to build a "better android".
Also I'm curious about the possibility of a CM phone. That would be *interesting*, and possibly the best business model. Drum up publicity through the aftermarket rom, and sell your own officially supported devices.

There is plenty of business models that will not hurt the end user, for example, sell the porting of CM to manufacturers who choose it as his primary Android version.

You will be amazed to know how bad managed some Android phone development teams are inside big companies. That's why some Android phones, including high-end ones, ends up in the shelves with so bugged ports that it is barely usable.

Have I missed something and is NT4, WinXP, Windows 7 and the server versions different operating systems all of the sudden? Panther, Lion, Snow Leopard, lambs and goats different OS all of the sudden? BeOS 4.5 and Beos 5? OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato? Windows 8 and RT?
Any smartphone with Cyanogen counts as Android, period !. And all other OS will take the position just right after that. I expected more from The Verge !

Have I missed something and is NT4, WinXP, Windows 7 and the server versions different operating systems all of the sudden? Panther, Lion, Snow Leopard, lambs and goats different OS all of the sudden? BeOS 4.5 and Beos 5? OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato? Windows 8 and RT?

If they don't behave the same, with 100% API compatibility across versions, then yes.

Cell phone makers Huawei and ZTE should knock on Cyanogen's door. This would give them a bigger slice of the US market as a lot of techophiles would buy their phones with Cyanogen when they normally wouldn't look at their brands. Having someone else put in the work to maintain the OS on your hardware isn't a bad thing either.

On the other hand, the Blackberry OS is the primary reason why I'm looking at a Blackberry phone.

My experience with Android is worse than miserable. I have an LG G2x and it's so unreliable that I can't receive phone calls, either because it's crashed or the battery drained to zero in a matter of 30 minutes. I have to constantly reboot to get data connectivity back. It seems that this experience with Android is widespread.

To me, because of my experience, Android is not a serious platform. The names "LG" and "Android" have been irrevocably sullied. So there seems to be a danger with having no control over the brand, or quality of forked releases.

Note: Most of your issues with Android are due to the customised version that LG installs, including a lot of extra cruft that no one uses that just soaks up resources. The first thing any user of an LG phone should do is install any other version of Android!

At the very least, install a different homescreen app. And then "disable" the LG one. That will fix most of your issues.

I'd say the challenge is massively increased by the Blackberry devices not already having an android kernel and the drivers inevitability being closed source... can't see the Blackberry devs helping out like the Sony Eriksson boys do either.

Most likely, if it got done, it'd be without hardware acceleration (i.e. crap for everyday use).

Out of all the alternative ROMs I've used, CM was the least interesting and most buggy. It was great back in the Android 2.3 days (especially compared to what LG and Sony were releasing), but I haven't been able to use a CM 10.x ROM on any of my phones for more than a few days before removing it in frustration.

It's too bad they don't incorporate many changes from other ROMs ... development seems to be very unidirectional (CM creates stuff that some others use).

Wish them luck, though, competition is great, and a better supported upgrade/install option is appreciated.